The Alliance of Independent Authors – a Q&A with Orna Ross

This is a repost of an interview on David Gaughran’s site, with the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, Orna Ross. You may have heard me mentioning them once or twice. I’m a member of this organisation and I find it extremely valuable for information sharing amongst authors, new and not so new. I paid a membership fee to join and the support I get there is worth the fee alone. When you read this article, remember that aLLi is a not for profit organisation.

In the interview, Orna explains what aLLi does and how it benefits members. I’m not showing you this article because of the interview, and I urge you to contine to read on as far as the comments. There are a small group of individuals who seem to think that aLLi is a scam organisation because it asks members to pay a joining fee. I’m not sure where the basis of these negative comments are coming from and there are many reasons why individuals hijack comment feeds with their ill thought out responses to what is clearly an information article. I’ll leave you to read the article yourself and after, tell me what you think.

Have you joined aLLi or a similar writing group? Would you expect to pay a fee to access the services? Should these organisations that say they are not for profit be charging at all?

When I cover publishers behaving badly, self-publishing scams, or authors’ rights, I always get asked if there is an organization which advocates for self-publishers.

The general feeling seems to be that we are particularly ill-served by the status quo, given that the pre-existing writers’ organizations either don’t let us in, don’t care about the issues that matter to us, or take up positions contrary to our interests.

Lately I’ve been pointing people towards the Alliance of Independent Authors. I’m not a member myself, but I have been impressed with the way they have started, the kind of people involved, and the issues they are taking on. I met several members at the London Book Fair in April, and they were all enthusing about the Alliance.

The Director of the organization, Orna Ross, is a former literary agent, turned traditionally published author, turned self-publisher (and fellow Celt). I invited Orna to explain more:

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